


Better stimuli

by Petra



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, Pegging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:49:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Barrayarans written of in early sociological texts had never spent years in a dysfunctional relationship with Ges Vorrutyer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better stimuli

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Derry (derryderrydown)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryderrydown/gifts).



Cordelia expected, from her Barrayaran lover, some kinds of restraints in love-making. The prudishness of the society was well-documented, mostly in ethnographic reports from the end of the Time of Isolation that chronicled one visitor or another's experiences in a highly judgmental milieu that thought very little of Betan mores.

The Barrayarans written of in those texts had never spent years in a dysfunctional relationship with Ges Vorrutyer.

"I'm fine," Aral said, the first time she stroked him lightly between his buttocks and he froze up. "Just--take it slowly."

Slowly meant weeks, when she would tease gently, talking to him all the while and waiting for that moment when he would forget it was her, always her cue to stop.

"We don't have to--" she said after a particularly bad incident, when he'd stopped breathing for thirty seconds and then pushed her hand away.

"I'll be damned if I'll let him dictate what I can and can't do with my wife," Aral said, and kissed her. She nuzzled his ear, hoping he'd drop the subject for another night rather than push himself, but he said, "Once more."

"You can't dare yourself to enjoy this," Cordelia said. Her irritation was not enough to remind him of Ges, surely, for he didn't flinch. "And you can probably learn again, but not if you're this worried every time."

Aral sighed and gave her the meltingly sweet look that prefigured his words. "Dear captain, I would follow anywhere you ordered."

Cordelia ran her hand down his muscled back, wishing he could relax into it. "It's not a mission. I'd like this, but if it's not sexually fulfilling for both of us, let's let it go for now."

"I enjoyed it then." Aral turned on his side and shook his head. "Though I don't know that we did it perfectly sober very often."

Images of the times she'd seen him deeply drunk flashed before her eyes. "One glass should do it, if you actually want this." One glass was nothing with his mass.

But he smiled as though she'd solved all their problems. "I'll fetch--" he shifted, grimaced, and changed directions. "Would you get us a glass each, then?"

"Of course, love." It wasn't as though any amount of wine would dull Cordelia's prosthetic erection, though she prudently left it between the sheets to keep warm while she fetched them a drink.

Between sips of maple mead--not much, but enough to make her toes tingle--they kissed and said the sort of foolish things that seemed appropriate at the time. "I do want you like this," she said, eventually.

Aral nodded and handed her the lubricant. "It'll be all right." He sounded too confident based on their record, but he didn't tense at the first stroke of her fingers, nor at the penetration, when he normally would.

"You feel wonderful," Cordelia told him, too aware of the words she shouldn't use to remember which ones were perfectly safe. Too many endearments reminded him of Ges like this. She bit her lip against the cloying words and put her hand around his erection, another good sign. "Let me give you an orgasm."

"I'm fine," Aral said, and this time she believed him.

"Call it positive conditioning," she said. "Please?"

He groaned into the pillow. "Your Betan logic undoes me. All right."

It was another two weeks before she tried the implement itself, after she'd teased him to gasping with her fingers and trusted that he knew her. With it firmly in place and buzzing faintly, muffled by her body, she met his eyes as she lined it up, kneeling between his legs. Aral smiled, looking as though he'd had more than his fair share of the ritual cup. "We should have placed a bet, you know."

"Oh?" Cordelia eased her hips forward slowly, by increments, waiting for him to call it off.

Aral shivered. "On how long--how long this would take."

It was such a basic sexual practice in her reckoning that she had nearly forgotten it was against the rules to mention it in polite company on her new planet. "Why would anyone care but us?"

"God knows." He cupped her hip with one hand and pulled her in a fraction faster. "--God. But think of the fortune we could've made."

Cordelia laughed, near moaning herself from the look on his face and the friction. "Are we early or late?"

Aral took her clean hand and kissed her knuckles like one of the ancient Vor bores. "I come so late to this, as all things--ah--that require the heart."

Hearts were hardly relevant anatomy, but she couldn't say that and break the mood. "You're doing well," she said instead, and gave him some more positive conditioning. Some other time, they could draw it out, when neither of them needed to drink even a token amount beforehand and Aral was past joking about how other people would think of them.

Cordelia wanted to be the only thing in his thoughts right then, driving out past loves and past hurts, and she thought that for a few moments, as he shuddered under her and jerked in her hand, that she might be. The hope that she could give him a moment's solace, that the tension easing from his expression might stay gone for the night, eased her own mind enough that she reached her orgasm a few moments later, blessing the ergonomic design of the galactic toy that joined them.

"I'm afraid--" Aral said lightly, then interrupted himself with a yawn "--I'm no good for anything else tonight."

Cordelia took his hand in turn and kissed it, then eased back, turning off the switch to stop the vibrations before she disengaged from the device herself. "I'll take care of things. Get some sleep."

"The best leaders know to give orders their subordinates must follow," Aral said, sounding more than half asleep.

Cordelia shook her head, though not where he could see, and smiled as she went to clean up.


End file.
